Soham jury sent home for weekend
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Huntley: Charged with double murder
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LONDON, England -- The Soham murder trial jury was sent home for the weekend after failing to reach verdicts on Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr over the deaths of British schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
The jury of seven women and five men retired Friday morning after Old Bailey, London, trial judge Mr Justice Moses completed his summing-up of the 27-day case.
He later adjourned the trial until Monday, after the jury had deliberated for just over five hours, warning them not to discuss the case with anybody.
The parents of both 10-year-olds were in court to see the jury sent out, and were accompanied by Holly's brother Oliver, 14, and Jessica's sisters Rebecca and Alison, aged 18 and 15.
The jury returned shortly before lunch and asked to see the bath in which Holly Wells allegedly drowned.
The judge ordered that historic Courtroom Number One be cleared and the bath brought in so the jury could inspect it in private.
They asked to see the bath and to be provided with a tape measure and "straight edge" to judge the depth of the bath.
Huntley, 29, denies murdering Holly and Jessica in Soham, in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire, but has pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Huntley's ex-girlfriend Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the school where the girls were pupils, denies one charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.
The jury heard Huntley claimed Holly died accidentally in the bath at his home in the grounds of the school on August 4, 2002.
He also said he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams but maintained he did not mean to kill her.
He also admitted bundling their bodies into his car and dumping them in a ditch at a remote spot near Lakenheath U.S. air force base in Suffolk where they were found 13 days later. He cut off their clothes and set fire to their corpses.
Carr told the jury she lied to protect her then fiance and gave him a false alibi. But she insisted she never suspected he was involved in the girls' disappearance.
